Famous Former Students

This summer I heard that a former fifth grader of mine was going to be on this season of The Voice. I was telling my current coworkers about this as we got our nails done a couple of weeks ago. They told me that another former student of mine (but not theirs - a factor of boomeranging back to my current school) was on Netflix's Hype House. I showed my age by asking, "What's Hype House." Hype House is not for me. I'm clearly not their demographic. It was very disconcerting to see a former student of mine on that show. I couldn't watch more than one episode. My husband thought his name was a stage name. But no, his last name really was Hacker in our school information system when he was 12 years old.

I have never watched The Voice before, but I had at least heard of it. I have been watching this season, after I heard Jaeden was going to be on the show. His blind audition was on the last night of auditions, and he was the second to last person to be chosen for a team. If his audition had been earlier in the selection process, he clearly would have had all four chairs turn, but two of the coaches had filled their teams before he auditioned. It was crazy and fun to see Jaeden, his sister, and their mom on TV.

I became aware of Jaeden the year his older sister was in my fifth-grade class. Jaeden is at least two, if not three, years younger than her, and I didn't know who he was until the end of the school year. The two of them opened up the annual school talent show, on the second to last day of the school year, by praying the rosary. Jaeden could *not* stand still as he prayed. His little hips were swinging back and forth, and he was working hard to keep his feet still. It was adorably distracting during the prayer. Later, as he took to the piano during the talent show, I was instantly aware of his talent with music. I'm not sure if he also sang during that first talent show in my memory, but he definitely did in later years. I vividly recall him singing and playing the guitar, showcasing a song he wrote for his mother, the year he was in my fifth-grade class.

Jaeden has shown talent and passion for music from a young age. I vaguely remember hearing he auditioned for America's Got Talent at one point but I never got to see that audition. Last night it was amazing to see how far he's come since he was that cutie little boy praying the rosary with his big sister. I can't wait to see how he does on The Voice and beyond.

Click here to see Jaeden's blind audition.

One Month In

A back-to-school card from my mother-in-law.

 

One month into the school year and my students have seen me barely more than my sub. I missed six school days due to COVID and two more for meetings at the Archdiocese. Here's to hoping I make it into the building for every school day in the month of October.

One of my favorite middle school social studies beginning of the school year activities fell a little flat this year due to my bout with COVID. I bring in artifacts from my life - things like T-shirts from my days in college theatre, photo albums, cards and letters - and have students walk around the room and take notes on each item. All of my new social studies classes were able to complete this part of the activity. But the second part of the assignment has them writing a biography of me from the lens of a historian using artifacts to reconstruct the life of an otherwise unknown person. The final step in the process is to debrief the reality of the artifacts from their biographies of me. (For example, I attended Space Camp and participated in an archeological dinosaur dig as part of teacher professional development, but the photos show me in a flight suit and actively excavating a hadrosaur scapula). This is a jumping off point to discuss how historians know what they know and the reasons they might make mistakes, especially when studying the ancient past. Unfortunately the middle piece of this project was not done this year. By the time I recovered enough to return to school it felt too late to resurrect that lesson and complete it according to the original plan.

It certainly has been a different sort of start to the school year. Needing a sub for eight school days during September has never happened to me before. Nor have I ever before missed a curriculum night in my 22-year career. Thankfully, my students and their families have seemed to handle it very well. I am having a blast with this new role. When people ask me how my school year is going, I can genuinely reply, "It's so much fun!"

I wanted to share some of the highlights of the school year so far, because it really has been a ton of fun.

• On the first day of school one eighth grader told me halfway through her first class with me, "I already have mad respect for you, but I don't know why."
• When receiving new spirit wear with the school's logo, a Nike logo, and each student's last name across the back, one boy said in a deadpan, "Saint Luke, growing together in faith. Brought to you by Nike." (Growing together in faith is our theme this year.)
• Another student quote, "You seem like the kind of person who was popular in high school." (I absolutely was not popular in high school.)
• I assigned an open-ended project where I told students they could show what they had learned in any format they wanted. As they asked questions and the truly open-ended nature of the project hit them full force, I heard, "This is great!", "I'm kind of excited," and "This class is so chill."
• I am teaching siblings of several students whose older siblings (mostly brothers) were in a fifth-grade class of mine before I left the school and came back. Many of them and their parents have reported to me that I was one of the older siblings' favorite teachers.
• Former fourth graders (now in fifth and sixth grade) continually smile broadly and wave at me, and many have said some variation of, "I'm looking forward to having you as my teacher again!"

COVID Positive

It was bound to happen. It's actually pretty amazing it hadn't already happened. Yesterday, my husband texted me while I was proctoring a standardized test for my students, who are in their first full week of the school year this week. My husband had tested positive for COVID. He'd been dealing with a scratchy throat since the weekend, but we had literal ash falling out of the sky on Saturday due to wildfires in our area, so we chalked it up to "attributable to another cause" until he also started feeling achy and fatigued.

As soon as I read his message, I called for another adult in the building to come hang out in my classroom, proctoring the test, so I could take a rapid test. A friend and coworker found a KN5 mask for me to wear. The antigen test result was negative, and I felt fine. So I went back to class, attempting to keep my distance from others and keeping the mask on for the rest of the day.

In the afternoon I began to feel a tickle in the back of my throat. I hoped it was psychosomatic given that I knew my husband had tested positive. Thankfully, the students had already been dismissed to "exploratory" classes, and I was alone in my room. After carpool, I felt a headache coming on, and the tickle had become a genuine discomfort that had me clearing my throat and dry coughing. I tested again upon arriving home. Still negative, but my symptoms were steadily getting worse.

Arranging for a sub in the second week of school, during standardized testing, without knowing for sure which class periods were going to come through my room took up all the energy I had left last evening. Thankfully I was able to get the teacher I replaced this year, who retired at the end of last year, to come in for me.

Sleeping last night was challenging. Congestion, achiness, and a severe pain in my left arm all made it nearly impossible to find a position that let me relax. Interestingly, my husband reported a similar pain in his hand the night before his COVID positive test. Ibuprofen helped ease the issues and I did get some good rest. 

I took a COVID test upon waking up this morning, and it was positive. I genuinely feel like I've been hit by a truck. Achy, fatigued, feverish (with chills when I attempt to cool down), constant congestion... A coworker called to ask for a password to get into the standardized testing site so my sub could proctor a test today, and she said she didn't even recognize my voice because I'm so congested. I slept most of the day, and although I tasted the yogurt I ate for breakfast, my lunch was completely tasteless. It was a very strange sensation. I am hopeful my case will be "mild" and I'll be able to return to normal life (though masked) on Tuesday... which is also my curriculum night.

With an overnight retreat the first week of school and standardized tests the second, my students really haven't seen how our classroom will actually operate this year. What a strange start to the school year.

Camp Colman

 For the past nine years the eighth graders at my current school have spent Thursday and Friday of their first week on an overnight retreat. I have watched the eighth-grade teachers and principal plan for this first week extended field trip with a slight sense of awe at how well it gets pulled together even though many details need to be arranged in advance of school starting, or even homeroom class lists being finalized. This year it was my turn to help plan and lead the retreat. I was glad I had a decade of experience taking fifth graders on a weeklong field trip under my belt. Waking up to the news that the other female chaperone slated to sleep in a cabin with half of the girls was sick and couldn't come and being handed medication by parents as we were walking out the door to load the bus was par for the course rather than reasons for major freak outs. 

Camp Colman is situated in Whitman Cove off of the Case Inlet and features high elevation activities to build leadership and teamwork. Students were offered the chance to participate in three high elevation activities. Sadly, there was not enough time for me to participate in more than one of them, but I was proud of myself for not only climbing up the catwalk (35 feet in the air) but also walking across to the other side 25 feet away before my students lowered me back to the ground.

In the evening our principal led the students in the songs they will lead at the all school Mass of the Holy Spirit on Monday morning. This was followed by an activity to identify one word that will help orient them toward a goal they set for themselves this school year, as a leader of the entire student body. Since it was my first year on this retreat, I participated in the activity and created my own keychain to carry with me throughout the school year.

Then it was time for a campfire and a little down time on the beach at sunset.

After a not so restful night's sleep in an exciting place, surrounded by friends they desperately wanted to chat with, the students woke up to complete the high elevation activities their group had not attempted the day before, attend Mass with our school's parish priest, eat a hasty lunch, and board the bus for home.

As a fan of outdoor environmental education and its strong community building impact on classes who attend in the fall, I can honestly say this was the perfect way to begin the school year. It's a shared experience we will be able to reflect on and build upon throughout the coming months as these students work to reach their academic, spiritual, and community goals. I can't wait to go again next year!

Back to School, Back to Middle School

 Today was the first full day of school. I am once again an eighth-grade homeroom teacher, teaching social studies to seventh and eighth grade students. It's been an exhausting couple of weeks, but tonight I am bone-weary tired. And tomorrow I am going with my partner teacher, principal, and the retired teacher whose classroom I took over on an overnight retreat with the eighth graders. I might need to sleep all weekend after I get home.

Yesterday was the Meet and Greet day, where parents and students come into the building to drop off supplies and see their new homeroom. I left my house, expecting to have time before families started to arrive to hang up a set of President cards I created over Labor Day Weekend. (The set I found in the classroom ended at Ronald Reagan and I decided I wanted to be able to update my set without buying a whole new one after elections.) However, the traffic gods did not approve of my plan. Normally when my commute is "bad" it takes me 45 minutes to get to school. "Terrible" traffic has taken me an hour in the past, but on the rare occasions when that happens, it's on my way home.

Yesterday it took me an hour and a half to get to school. I rolled in minutes before eighth grade students were slated to arrive to help families find their students' new classrooms. I ran into the second-grade teachers in the hallway and asked them to help me carry my new plants into my room so they wouldn't die in my car before I had the chance to get back out to it after the Meet and Greet.

The Meet and Greet itself was very fun. I spent most of the time hanging out in the hallway bantering with colleagues. I kept track of who turned in forms for our second and third day of school overnight field trip and chatted with my new students and their parents (and/or grandparents). Several students from my two fourth grade classes, now in fifth and sixth grades stopped by to say, "hi." At least one jumped up and down as she did so. Many parents were excited that I was teaching their child this year (I have taught an older sibling of at least a quarter of the eighth graders) or that their child will have the opportunity to be in my classroom again in the future. Only a couple of my former students totally ignored me as they walked past my new classroom. 😂

After families had departed and several of my co-workers left, at least to grab lunch, I sat in my principal's office for over an hour with my partner teacher planning the two day retreat. It was fun and necessary. But as I scarfed down my lunch after 1:00pm I decided to tackle tasks necessary for the first day of school rather than hang my President set as I waited for my 3:00pm meeting with the Learning Resource Director. 

My 3:00pm meeting started about 4:00pm and lasted until 5:00pm. Even though I hadn't written the first day schedule on the board or finished my slide presentation for the first day, I left when the meeting concluded. Thankfully, the evening traffic was lighter than expected, especially for leaving at peak commute time.

This morning traffic was light and I arrived with time to collect my thoughts before the day started. The day was fun. Middle schoolers are interesting people. Even when I realized I was scheduled to have two classes in my room at the same time (my own homeroom for Spanish and a seventh grade homeroom for study hall), I was able to find a place for everyone to be. I taught one of my first day of school lessons based on Ted Kooser's poem "Abandoned Farmhouse" to every seventh grader and gave them the class period to tell me something about their likes and dislikes using the structure of the poem.

I tracked down all the necessary paperwork to take my students away overnight, and put everything in order before I left for the day, again at 5:00pm. Maybe I'll get those Presidents hung next week...

The highlight of my day was when one student said, "I already have mad respect for you, but I don't know why."

Don't Buy Cheap Tape

 My college job was working in the theatre. I hung and focused lights, lay cable, moved chairs on and off the orchestra pit, taped down cable and Marley floor for modern dance, and other duties as assigned. One of those other duties was opening up the theatre for an 8:00am Monday-Friday music class, but I digress. 

I got to know theatrical tape very well during the years I worked in theatre. Spike tape, paper tape, duct tape, and gaff tape. Spike tape is glow in the dark, used for marking the spot (spiking) where set pieces or actors need to be in order to be in the aforementioned focused light. Paper tape is basically thick, black masking tape, and theatres likewise use black duct and gaff tape. We primarily used gaff tape to tape down cables that had to run along the floor. It is super adhesive, like duct tape, but even after weeks of holding something firmly in place, peels off without leaving a residue like painter's tape. Super useful stuff.

Fast forward to about five years ago, moving into my fifth classroom in my fourth school, when I was lamenting the fact that painter's tape was too lightweight to hold up my laminated items double mounted on colorful cardstock. One of my new coworkers said to use gaff tape and asked if I had ever heard of it. It was a literal face palm moment for me. 🤦 Of course! Gaff tape! Why hadn't I been using it for all my classroom poster hanging needs??

This year I had a tiny bit of my previous roll of (purple) gaff tape left. So I ordered a new roll from Amazon. I saw that my previous order of one roll was only slightly less expensive than an order of two rolls of a different brand. Like a dummy, I ordered the cheap brand.

I used the new tape to hang up a huge set of adjectives above the window in my new classroom as well as several posters and a "Read Like a Historian" sign that had three iterations before actually being laminated and ready to hang. (I spilled lunch on the first one I created before it was laminated, I sent the second one through the laminator crooked enough that the last third of it was totally destroyed, though thankfully it did not jam up the laminator. I had middle school helpers make a third one that was laminated without incident.)

It's been hot. As seems to be common in older school buildings without AC, the building compounds the heat, insulating it. Everything I hung with the new tape started to drip off the wall or out and out fell to the floor overnight. I had to jump up on the counters and vent to pull down the adjectives so they wouldn't fall behind the vent, becoming ridiculously challenging to retrieve. Items that were light enough to hang with painter's tape stayed up without issue. Seriously, when paper tape holds better than gaff tape can you even call it gaff tape?

I ordered new tape - the professional grade, more expensive brand of gaff tape. It will arrive this weekend which means I get to spend the evenings of my in-service days re-hanging all the stuff I originally hung-up last week. And I have a roll and a half of moderately expensive tape that I will never use again.

Don't buy cheap tape, my friends. Stick with the professional grade.

Late Summer Musings

I have attended several Zoom professional development workshops and sessions this week and last week. The majority of participants in attendance were most proud of taking a real break from their work over the summer. There were also many people who had spent time working on advanced degrees and even one who spent the summer "batch planning" so that she already has loose lesson plans through June. Color me jealous of all the above categories. Actually, maybe I'm not jealous of those who have totally unplugged from school over the summer. I am proud of the work I've accomplished this summer.

My classroom is still in enough disarray that I have yet to take any pictures. But I am feeling more and more excited about moving back to middle school. I have recalled several activities I created for the last eighth grade history class I taught as I've been drifting off to sleep at night. I've also asked my former eighth grade partner teacher for digital copies of back to school activities she shared with me when we were in the same building. 

I ran into two former eighth grade students at Safeway today. I didn't remember both of their names until after I was home (even though I knew they both started with the letter J), but we had a pleasant thirty second interaction as they picked out fruit because they got hungry watching their friend play in a tennis tournament at a nearby high school. They appeared happy enough to see me, and all of the reasons I really enjoyed working with middle schoolers hit me hard in the few moments we were talking.

The coming school year is going to be great. I keep saying that to others and thinking it to myself. One of the assistant superintendents of the Archdiocese reminded us to find our marigolds and avoid walnut trees this year. As I reread this article, now almost a decade old, I was saddened to recognize many of my former and current colleagues in the description of the walnut trees... and even myself at times. But after several days of reflection, I see that my current school building houses so many marigolds. So many that they are unavoidable! Now my goal is to NOT be a walnut tree for the coming year. I might be able to accomplish that if I remember to seek out my marigolds when I need a boost.